2020 Part 1: Pandemic Wars

Posted on May 26, 2022 by Mike

Life in 2020 after Covid-19. Continue reading →

The Worst Year Ever?: The virus seemed to appear in or around Wuhan, China, in late 2019. It appeared to be extremely contagious. It was given the name COVID-19¹ on February 11, 2020. In the past such scares (SARS and Ebola) had pretty much bypassed the West, but within two weeks Italy had become a global hotspot. China, South Korea, and New Zealand fought the disease relentlessly, and had very good results. If all other countries had done the same, the disease probably would have run its course in a few months. However, because in many cases the disease had mild or even undetectable symptoms, many people did not take it seriously and were scornful of those who did.

Editorial note: I have decided to capitalize Pandemic as a sign of respect. There have been other pandemics in my lifetime, but Covid-19 was the only one that had a significant effect on the U.S.

Cases began appearing in the U.S. in early February. The first death was reported in the state of Washington on the 29^th. On March 11 the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic. Two days later the Trump administration declared a national emergency and issued a travel ban from 26 non-European countries. However, the ban only applied to people who were not U.S. citizens. Need I add that this was an election year?

On Sunday March 15 Felix Springer and I played in a STaC game at the Hartford Bridge Club. The talk that day was largely about Colorado Springs, where a woman who had played in a sectional tournament may have been a super-spreader. She competed in the Bridge Center there in six events between February 27 and March 3. She died on March 13.

I later learned that Fred Gagnon had played in the same tournament, but he never was at the same table with her. Before the Pandemic struck Fred played both in Simsbury and Hartford and frequently partnered with my wife Sue. Details about the Colorado Springs incident can be found here.

New York and its suburbs were hit hard very early. While attending a large gathering at a synagogue in Rob and Laura Petrie’s hometown of New Rochelle, a man who had recently been abroad passed the disease on to many people, including the rabbi. At one time 108 of the state’s 173 cases were in Westchester County, which borders on Connecticut.

My notes about the bridge game at the HBC on March 15 record that despite some mistakes Felix and I won.² I remember that one woman who played that day wore a medical mask of some sort. We already knew that the club would be closed indefinitely after the game. Felix and I were the last two to leave the Bridge Center. He was responsible for locking up after we left. At the last minute I dashed over to the shelves that contained non-bridge books and selected Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz³ and Fatherland by Robert Harris. Both books resided in my house for much longer than I had planned, but I did eventually return them.

Sue and I had signed up for a bridge cruise on the Danube River with the famous expert, Larry Cohen. We were scheduled to leave on March 17. That cruise never happened. The details of the story are provided here.

Responding to the Pandemic: Although President Trump had declared a state of emergency, he, like most Republicans, absolutely refused to take the disease seriously. He made it clear that masks were not mandatory, and he refused to wear one. He then proceeded to make an utter ass of himself whenever he tried to talk about the Pandemic. He even predicted an “Easter miracle” that absolutely did not happen. Despite the fact that it was obviously an irresponsible if not evil idea, he actually encouraged everyone to go to church on that day.

Not only did this laissez-faire approach probably cost him the election; it also cost the country several hundred thousand lives. The Center for Disease Control also fumbled the ball. For some reason they refused to accept the test that had been developed by the World Health Organization, and their own test proved unreliable. So, for months as the virus spread geometrically throughout the country, the U.S. had no test. Soon the situation was much worse in America than anywhere else in the world.

To be fair Trump did direct more than a billion dollars to a virtually unknown company named BioNTech to develop a vaccine using mRNA technology. Others also were funded, but BioNTech received the biggest prize because its leaders claimed that with proper funding they could produce a new vaccine in a few months. Their effort was dubbed Project Lightspeed. Obviously Trump hoped that they would deliver by election day, but they missed by a few weeks. In fact, Pfizer, which did not participate, developed and tested a similar vaccine a little sooner, and the Chinese were already using a somewhat inferior vaccine by then.

Although most people who contracted the initial virus recovered after a week or so, the aged and those with comorbidities did not fare as well. The death rate in 2020 was over 3 percent. Nursing homes throughout the country often experienced horrendous situations. Hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly.

Of course, many people still had to work, but most of us hunkered down and stayed in our houses. We had to learn to order groceries—and anything else that we needed—online. I wrote a little program to allow members of the Simsbury Bridge Club to send me descriptions and/or pictures of their new lifestyle. I then posted them on a webpage that anyone could view. A few people sent responses, and I promptly posted them. You can view them here.

Reading: I also posted quite a few entries about my own life. I took advantage of the extra free time to read more. By June 28 I had read nine novels: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Magpie Murders, Fatherland, Supermarket by Bobby Hall, Moriarity by Anthony Horowitz, Two for Texas by James Lee Burke, The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, The Brothers K by David James Duncan, and Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke. Supermarket, which I bought at a rare venture to the Target store, was awful. The others were all pretty good. The Enfield Public Library was closed. I purchased several books from Powell’s in Portland, OR. It took them almost a month for them to send them, but their selection of new and used volumes was outstanding.

What I especially liked about Powell’s was the number of books by Jack Vance that were offered for sale. I found some listed there that I had never seen in a library or bookstore, including the one that won an Edgar award for him, The Man in a Cage.

One of the last books that I later ordered from Powell’s was Jack Vance’s autobiography. Because I like a challenge—especially when I had an enormous amount of time on my hands—I selected the version in Italian, Ciao Sono Jack Vance! (E Questa Storia Sono Io). Vance has always been one of my favorite authors, and his last book was certainly one of his best. What a life he led! He managed to finish the book even though he was in poor health and nearly blind. He had to dictate the entire volume.

I was so inspired by this book that I decided to undertake this set of blog entries, which I later labeled The 1948 Project. The details surrounding its genesis have been recorded here.

Most aspects of life were put on hold in the spring and summer of 2020. The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) canceled all three of its national tournaments and prohibited its units and districts from holding tournaments for the rest of the year. The National Debate Tournament was also canceled. Hollywood closed shop.

Most schools attempted to reopen in the fall, but the result was a huge spike in the number of cases of COVID-19. The election was held in November, of course, but a very large number of people voted by mail rather than in person.

I walked southwest on North St. until it ended at Hazard Ave. (190). I turned left and walked west to Park St. Then a left on Elm St. I walked past Carris Reels to School St. and then north back to North St.

Exercise: I also exercised more during the lockdown. I was walking 35-40 miles per week, outside if the weather was tolerable, and on the treadmill when it wasn’t. On May 2 and a few other occasions I walked ten miles outside.

Later in the summer, however, I could no longer walk more than a mile or two without a pain gradually developing in the top of my right foot. This condition, which caused me to limp, bothered me throughout the year. I still walked, but I had to stop and stretch my IT band for a couple of minutes. Sometimes I would need to perform this ritual two or three times in a 2.5 mile lap. I often stopped after one lap. However, when I walked on the treadmill it hurt a lot less.

Therefore, I began to walk indoors more frequently. On my convertible laptop computer, a Lenovo model called Yoga, I watched many operas from the Metropolitan Opera’s streaming service that were new to me, including Ghosts of Versailles, La Wally, Orphée et Eurydice and many operas by Massenet and Bellini. I was really impressed by performances by Natalie Dessay, Teresa Stratas, and Marilyn Horn. The most bizarre moment occurred when Renée Fleming appeared in Rossini’s Armida. In a tender moment she rubbed cheeks with tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who happened to be black. When they parted more than a square inch of his brown makeup remained on her cheek.

I also watched operas on YouTube while I was walking on the treadmill. The quality was a little spotty—both the performances and the recordings. However, this introduced me to several of the more neglected operas, some of which were delightful.

The best thing about the YouTube operas was that I was able to make MP3 files of them using a piece of free downloadable software called MP3Studio. I had already made MP3 files out of my opera CD’s and downloaded them to a small MP3 player that I had purchased at Best Buy.⁴ I added quite a few operas from YouTube. My favorite was Tchaikovsky’s Cherevichki. I liked it so much that I purchased a DVD of its performance at Covent Garden in London.

I also downloaded hundreds of great rock and roll songs of the sixties and seventies. I could scarcely believe that most of the best songs from Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones were now available for free.

When I walked around the neighborhood I listened to music on the tiny MP3 play. In the cold weather I used my Bose headphones. When it was warmer I used ear buds.

My new and improved arch supports. The one on the right is inside-out.

Toward the end of the year I misplaced one of the arch supports that I had purchased from Walmart before the Pandemic. These were springy pieces of metal (I think) that were inserted into bands that wrapped around the foot and were secured by Velcro. I bought new ones at the same store that were spongy balls in elastic bands. They cost $10.

After I had used the new ones for about a month, the pain in my foot ceased, and I could walk five miles without stopping. I understand that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a famous fallacy, but I did not even consider reverting to the original pair when I discovered the hiding place of the lost arch support.

The Montalbano crew stayed together through all thirty-seven episodes.

I don’t remember how I heard about it, but on November 2 I subscribed (for only 8$ per month!) to a streaming service called MHz Choice. It had all thirty-seven of the Commissario Montalbano movies that I had learned about in 2016 in Sicily⁵ as well as dozens of other European mysteries and other offerings. All of them were captioned in English. I started with Montalbano (and a prequel called Young Montalbano), but I soon found many other shows that I enjoyed tremendously. There were also a few mysteries on YouTube, including the entire set of Inspector Morse shows.

During one of my walks around the neighborhood a bizarre event occurred. Just after I reached my house a car pulled into the driveway. It was driven by a man carrying three large cheese pizzas from Liberty Pizza. Evidently my phone, which was securely in my pocket, had somehow activated the Slice app to order the pizzas while I was walking. I was billed for them, but the charge was eventually removed from my credit card account after I complained about it.

On August 4 there was a tornado watch. A branch fell and damaged our gutter. A very large branch fell from a tree near the house on 10 Park St. It landed on and crushed a pickup truck that had been parked nearby. A week or more was required to clean it up. I don’t know what became of the truck.

Translation: In desperate need of a project to occupy my mind during the day, I decided in June to translate one of my travel journals into Italian. My Italian teacher, Mary Trichilo (TREE key low) agreed to read my efforts and to provide suggestions. I chose our 2005 Rick Steves trip to Italy that was billed as the Village Italy Tour.⁵ It was the first one on which the Corcorans joined us, and the first one for my first digital camera.

Reliving that experience was great fun; some of the best moments in my life occurred during those sixteen days. It was also a pretty good way to build my Italian vocabulary back up. I could only hope that I would be able to use it one day. I discovered a few websites that helped me a lot—translate.google.com, of course, but also Reverso.net and LanguageTool.org.

Masks: In the last three quarters of 2020 masks were required virtually everywhere. During the summer it was discovered that the disease was spread by aerosols from exhaling, talking, and singing. Moreover, being indoors greatly increased the probability of transmission. So, it was generally considered acceptable to go outside unmasked, but people were warned to stay at least six feet away from strangers. The last practice was called “social distancing”.

My favorite mask, but the straps tended to break.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) had a problem. Although they knew that the N95 masks that had been approved for use by NIOSH for painters and others who were often exposed to aerosols were by far the most effective, their official announcements said that people did not need them. Instead they recommended that any type of face covering would work just as well. So, a lot of people made their own masks or even wore bandannas across the lower half of their faces like outlaws in westerns. Others, such as I, purchased ten cheap cotton masks made by Hanes that could easily be washed.

There was a good reason for this deliberate misinformation campaign. A shortage of N95 masks was feared, and it was considered critically important that the best protection (and tightly fitting N95 masks offered much better protection) be available to those who dealt with known COVID patients or with large numbers of people in situations that precluded “social distancing”.

For some people masks, especially the ones that worked the best, were very uncomfortable. They did not bother me much at all. I was, however, quite happy when, during the summer, it became apparent that masks were not necessary outdoors. Still, when I took walks I made certain to keep at least six feet away from other walkers whenever possible.

Health: I was never healthier than in 2020. I experienced no significant ailments at all—not even a cold or indigestion. That pain in my foot bothered me a bit, and on one occasion the nail on my left little finger got bent back and eventually fell off. On the other hand, I was exercising so much that I had to make a shopping trip to Kohl’s to buy a smaller belt to hold up my pants.

My mental state was pretty positive as well. I was able to concoct several interesting projects to occupy my mind when I was not exercising or reading. I would have appreciated a diversion now and then, but most of my life had been good preparation for an extended lockdown. I had a lot of experience at keeping myself occupied.

Sue was also pretty healthy physically, but she got winded very easily. Moreover, she has always been a much more social animal than I was. The strain of the isolation on her spirit was quite evident.

We took a couple of short trips just to get out of the house. At some point in June or July we drove down to Gillette Castle and had a little picnic. We found a spot that was shady and isolated. The walk from the parking lot to our site was uphill, and it definitely wore Sue out. After lunch I took a hike up to the castle by myself. Only a few people were there, and I kept my distance from all of them. This was a very simple outing, but it felt like a small taste of freedom. Perhaps prisoners have the same feeling the first time that they are allowed into the exercise yard.

On September 24, when it finally appeared that the Pandemic had abated a bit, we made a road trip to Roger Williams Zoo in Providence. The highlight for me was when we went to see the sloths. I got to show the attendant there that I was wearing a tee shirt with a sloth on it. Sue had bought it for me in Costa Rica.⁸

On the way back to Enfield we made a stop in Willimantic so that Sue could show me the Shaboo Stage, an outdoor venue that she had frequented to watch local musical performers, mostly blues bands. Sue was friendly with several of these people, and she was very worried for them. The lockdown had eliminated their primary source of income.

We made a third stop at Oliver’s Dairy Bar where we ordered burgers and listened—in our cars—to Bruce John singing and playing his guitar. A few people got out of their cars and danced. It was all a little weird, but it was something to do. Sue had claimed that the food would be very good, but we were both disappointed in it.

People our age were terrified to be among strangers, and reasonably so. Not everyone survived that first year. I did not hear of anyone who died directly from COVID-19, but all of the following members of the debate community died in 2020:

Max Horton, whom I knew quite well from the Simsbury Bridge Club.
David Waltz, whose wife I knew from Tuesday evenings at the Hartford Bridge Club and at tournaments. The three of us even went out to dinner one evening in Hyannis, MA.
Elaine Jaworowski, who was a regular player at the HBC morning games.
Gladys Feigenbaum, who only played occasionally at the HBC and did not seem to be in great health before the lockdown. I did not know her well.

Victor (blue shirt) with Lew Gamerman, Kate McCallum, and Sheila Gabay after a victory in 2019.

The most shocking news was the murder of Grand Life Master Victor King in his own home in Hartford on July 26. He was a very popular player and, to all appearances, had no enemies. His assailant was also his tenant. I had played against Victor a few times and I had talked with him about a few matters concerning the district’s website. At the time the incident was covered in local and national outlets as well as abroad. I was not able to find any information about the disposition of the case.

On July 23 my occasional bridge partner, boss, and good friend Bob Bertoni was operated on for the second or third time in recent years. He recovered enough to continue working as the District Director for the rest of the year, but I think that everyone knew that the handwriting was on the wall.

Sue’s friend and occasional bridge partner, Ginny Basch, also went into the hospital in July. A few days after she had been released she needed to return and have a heart valve inserted. She seemed to recover well enough after that.

On November 16 we learned that Tyesha Henry, Sue’s long-time protégée, had COVID-19. Sue had been with her in an automobile on November 6, but Sue did not develop any symptoms. She dodged a bullet.

Food:Few restaurants were open, and those that were provided only delivery and pickup orders. Most of the time Sue and I ate at home. I continued going to the grocery store, but I always wore a mask (as did nearly everyone else), and I always used the automated checkouts. I seldom was within ten feet of another human. Sue usually ordered groceries online and drove to the store to pick them up.

The hybrid Yum restaurant in E. Windsor.

We ordered pizza perhaps once a month, and we drove to KFC three times⁷, once in West Springfield and twice in East Windsor. The first drive to East Windsor, which was probably in May, was very strange. There were almost no cars on any of the roads, but there was a long line at the drive-through window at the KFC/Taco Bell restaurant. I did not get my order until twenty-five minutes after my arrival. When I arrived home we discovered that the bags contained both our $20 fill-up and someone else’s Taco Bell order.

On July 18 Sue and I drove over to the beautiful house of Ken and Lori Leopold in Avon, CT. We were originally planning to go to a restaurant for supper, but the negotiations between Lori and Sue for a suitable place with outdoor seating broke down. We enjoyed a very nice supper and then played a few rubbers of bridge. I played with Sue and then Ken. Lori had never played rubber bridge before! That was the only time in the last nine and a half months of 2020 that we dined indoors with other people.

Sue and I celebrated all of the holidays alone together in our house. That was what one did in The (first) Worst Year Ever.

The Neighborhood: The big news was that in the spring the family that lived diagonally across the street from us (“cattywampus” as my Grandmom Cernech would have said) on the southwest corner of North St. and Allen Pl. unceremoniously moved away. This was the family with several trucks and an ATV that the kids rode around on. The father often flew the “Don’t tread on me” flag and other right-wing banners on their flagpole.

The house (a small ranch house with one garage) and yard were both in bad shape when the family abandoned them. Workers spent weeks getting it back in marketable condition. It was auctioned off; no “For Sale” side ever appeared. It was purchased by a woman who has kept it in immaculate conditioned. She even resuscitated the lawn.

The flagpole has never been used since the other family left.

Three doors to the west of them the “patriotic” cause was taken up by a couple. She grew sunflowers accompanied by Bag-a-Bugs and had a statue of an owl that turned its head occasionally. I scoffed at the former and was enthralled by the latter.

He was another kettle of fish. He also had a flagpole. He flew the “Don’t tread on me” flag, but also other flags including a Trump-Pense banner ones about POW/MIAs or respecting the police. Another Trump sign was proudly displayed above the garage. He also had a “concealed carry” sticker on his car’s window. Most bizarrely, he had a fenced-in back yard with red triangular signs on both gates with the word “MINES” on them, as if the back yard contained mines. I took him seriously; he seemed to be retired from both the military and law enforcement, and he was obviously “gung-ho”.

I generally gave these people a wide berth, but my walking took me past their house quite often.

We really only have one next-door neighbor, the residents of 1 Hamilton Court. A couple with children had been living there for quite a few years. He disappeared from the neighborhood at some point before the Pandemic started. A different man moved in and immediately started making over the house and the back yard. I talked to him for a few minutes once. He seemed friendly enough. Anything would be better than his predecessor, who had said he would kill our cats if they ventured onto his property.

This photo was taken from my chair in the office. Giacomo is the one with the long bushy tail.

The Pets: Our two cats, Giacomo and Bob, really enjoyed the lockdown. Sue and I got in the habit of watching television together from 8 p.m. until I could no longer keep my eyes open, which usually occurred between 9:30 and 10. The cats loved the idea that we were both sitting still. Giacomo often sat peacefully on my lap, as he had done for many years. Now, however, the two of them would also sometimes lie together on a blanket that Sue had laid out on the floor. Giacomo seemed to enjoy having a friend. They assumed every position imaginable, including spooning.

Giacomo showing off his thumbs on the bed on November 1.

In October Giacomo surprised me by catching a moth. When he was younger he was a fearsome hunter, but in 2020 that was the only time that he showed much interest in any wildlife.

Sue and I never knew Giacomo’s real birth date, but we celebrated it annually on November 1. 11/1/20 was his seventeenth birthday. When I returned to bed for my first nap of the day I was shocked to find Giacomo had climbed up on the bed. We enjoyed a nap together for the first time in at least a year.

On Christmas Giacomo found a comfortable resting spot. He was left-pawed. Here he is using his business paw to ask for petting.

On August 4^th, the day of a tornado watch, I discovered that at least one of the cats (I suspected Giacomo) had stopped using the ramp in the basement that led to the cat door and had instead designated an area of the newer side of the basement as an open latrine. After I cleaned up the smelly mess I drove to Target and purchased a large litter box and some cheap litter.

The cats quickly adjusted to using the litter box, but they tracked litter all over everywhere. I solved the problem by switching to Clean Paws, which was much more expensive but did not stick the their feet as much.

Friends: Sue had many, but I really only had one friend, Tom Corcoran. He left the Land of Steady Habits shortly after the Pandemic struck and rented an apartment in Burlington, VT, which is where his children lived.

In 2020 we only saw him once in person. On August 1 he was back in his house in Wethersfield to take care of some business, and Sue and I drove to meet him there. Sue brought with her and antique ice box that Tom pledged to fix it up somehow.

We celebrated Tom’s birthday with a Zoom call on October 27. You should be able to calculate his age if you have read these blogs carefully.

Bridge: There was no face-to-face duplicate bridge in 2020 after the middle of March.

Many people played online. The ACBL even set up an arrangement for “virtual clubs” that held online sanctioned games of eighteen boards. I did not participate.

On November 18 District 25’s Executive Committee held a meeting on Zoom. It was depressing. The ACBL was probably going to cancel the NABC in the spring in St. Louis and the one scheduled for Providence, RI, in the July of 2021. Most of the members of the Executive Committee, including me, were also on the committee for the latter event. It was crushing news.

The North American Pairs and Grand National Teams would be contested online. I did not like this news at all, but I asked Ken Leopold, Felix Springer, and Trevor Reeves to play with me, and they all agreed. I told Ken that I would practice as much as I could online. We played online on Christmas Day, but that was the only time in 2020. I hated the experience, but this might be my last chance to play in Flight B of the GNT.

Sports: The National Basketball Association, like all other forms of indoor entertainment, suspended play when the Pandemic hit. In order to salvage part of the 2019-2020 season the league spent $190 to build a “bubble” at Disney World in Orlando, FL. Twenty-two of the league’s thirty teams were invited to the city to play the remaining eight regular season games and the playoffs behind closed doors. Of course, the games were televised.

Yes, they actually played all of the games in Disney World surrounded by pictures of imaginary fans.

This approach worked very well. Everyone involved in the games stayed in the bubble and was tested regularly. No cases at all were reported. The season ended on October 11, with the Los Angeles Lakers crowned as champions. The league generated about $1.5 billion is revenue.

Other sports did not follow the league’s example. The only one that I was interested in was college football. The Big Ten was pressured by Trump into playing the season, sort off. All non-conference games were canceled, and the beginning of play was postponed until October 24. Games were played in empty or nearly empty stadiums.

Michigan was ranked #18 in the preseason and beat #21 Minnesota 49-24 in the opening game. This was followed by three embarrassing losses. In week 5 the Wolverines used a new quarterback, Cade McNamara, to beat Rutgers in three overtimes. In week 6 they lost to Penn State at home. Since all of its remaining games were canceled due to COVID-19 outbreaks, the team ended the season 2-4, the worst record in living memory.

The whole idea of playing during a pandemic was idiotic. The NCAA ended up granting extra eligibility to all of the players.

I guess that sports addicts enjoyed watching the competitions in empty stadiums and arenas. I did not watch any sports at all during the entire year.

Miscellaneous: I filed my income taxes in February. I did not receive my refund until August 1. There were two reasons for this: Most IRS employees were working remotely, and a large number were busy distributing the $1400 stimulus checks that Donald Trump made sure had his name on them. I am not complaining.

The class that I took in Advanced Italian held only nine of its ten classes. The last one was canceled (without a refund) because of COVID-19. I signed up for the fall class, but it was canceled on September 9.

On August 8 we received a check from AIG for the trip insurance for our cruise in March that had been canceled. AIG, the largest company in the trip insurance market, must have taken a real bath in 2020.

I purchased and tried to read a couple of Montalbano novels by Andrea Camilleri. They were difficult for me. The narrative was in standard Italian, but most of the dialogue was in the Sicilian dialect, which is much different.

On August 11 Bank of America refused the automatic payment of the bill for our homeowners’ insurance policy. I had received a new credit card and had not yet changed the number on Travelers’ website. It was resolved in a few days.

Beginning on November 10 we enjoyed almost a week of really beautiful weather. Sue and I drove up to her property in Monson, MA. She wanted to walk up to the top, but she got less than a hundred yards before she was out of breath and exhausted. We rested a few minutes and then walked back to the car.

Desperate for something to do, on November 11 I began polishing up my novel Ben 9, which I have posted here. I just had to do this. It had been inside of me, and I had to let it out. I doubt that anyone will ever read it. Who is interested in reading about the clergy in the eleventh century?

What else? I feel as if I have left out something important that happened in 2020. What was it? Oh, yeah, the election. You can read about it here.

1. I don’t know why all the letters are capitalized. It is not an acronym. The five letters stand for Coronavirus Disease. “Corona” is the Latin word for crown. The -19 was added to indicate that it began in 2019.

2. The results have been posted correctly on the ACBL website in the old format at https://web2.acbl.org/tournaments/results/2020/03/2003505/2003505_20.HTM. However, the Live for Clubs results for that day (https://my.acbl.org/club-results/details/126150) do not even show us participating.

3. I tweeted that I thought that Magpie Murders was the best mystery that I had ever read. Anthony Horowitz thanked me in the comments and wished well to the HBC.

4. The Best Buy in Enfield was a casualty of the Pandemic. The building was still empty two years later.

5. The journal for the Sicily trip is posted here.

6. The English version of that trip can be read here.

7. The excursion to the sloth sanctuary is described here.

8. There once was a KFC in Enfield on Route 5, but the owner retired, and the store closed. Enfield contains almost every other kind of fast food place, but for years no one sold fried chicken until a Popeye’s opened in August of 2022.

2008 Road Trip to Michigan

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Mike

Driving through Canada to the Wolverine state. Continue reading →

In 1975-76, my last year of coaching at U-M, the debate team was in shambles. I described the situation here. During the three years that I spent at Wayne State in downtown Detroit I heard virtually nothing about the U-M team. I do not recall hearing that they attended any tournaments. I figured that the team had been abolished or reduced to obscurity.

I discovered at some point in the 2007-2008 school year that, unbeknownst to me, they program had at some point risen from the ashes and was competing strongly at the national level. I don’t remember how I learned about this, but as soon as I did, I composed and sent an email to Josh Hoe¹, the director of the debate program. In it I described my lackluster career as a debater and my much more successful efforts at coaching. I also described the hardships that the U-M debaters and coaches had to overcome when it was funded by the speech department.

Josh really appreciated my email a lot. He forwarded it to all of the alumni of the debate program. This precipitated an outburst of “reply all” responses from old-timers. Josh needed to ask them to take their communications off-line. It was great for me. I was able to find out what had become of most of my charges.

At some point over the summer Josh and his assistant Aaron Kall² decided to host a mostly informal gathering for debate alums on the weekend of U-M’s first home game against Miami U. (OH) on September 7, 2008. As it happened it was also the debut in Michigan Stadium of newly hired coach Rich Rodriguez. The team had lost its opener, 25-23 to Utah.

By 2008 I was no long working as constantly as I had in the nineties. My wife Sue and I also had amassed enough money at this point to pay for trips. As soon as I heard of the debate/football event, I made arrangements with Josh for us to attend. We decided to make a mini-vacation of it and to drive across Michigan to visit Sue’s aunt and uncle, Boband Carol Locke³, and their daughters, Deb, Wendy, and Sandy. They all lived in the Grand Rapids area. Our destination was Bob and Carol’s home in Hudsonville.

Sue was really looking forward to that part of the trip. Sue liked everyone in that part of her family a lot. I suspected that part of the attraction was that Bob was the only member of his family to move away from Enfield. His three brothers and his sister (Sue’s mother Effy) all lived within a couple of miles of one another.

Documentation: I don’t think that I took any notes on this trips. I had a small Canon point-and-shoot camera in those days. If I brought it, I either did not take any photos, or I lost them. I think that for some reason I left it home.

I found a folder on my computer about this trip, but its contents were of no help. Inside it are two identical html files that contain MapQuest directions from 1275 Huron St. in Ypsilanti to our house in Enfield. That address in Ypsi in 2023 was associated with the Marriott Eagle Crest resort and hotel. I have absolutely no memory of staying there. Aside from that it only contains an image of the Hampton Inn logo and a small map of the area around the Hampton Inn in Ann Arbor.

When I first asked Sue about the trip, she had no recollection at all. She could not even remember being in Michigan Stadium. Later, after a little prompting, she recalled a few details that I have included.

In short, I am relying almost exclusively on my memory for the account below.

Enfield to Ann Arbor: The town of Ann Arbor had a population of only about 112,000 in 2023. However, on football Saturdays almost that many people would be crammed into Michigan Stadium. Lodging would be in high demand. My first order of business was to find a place for us to stay for Friday and Saturday night. I booked us rooms at the Hampton Inn that was just south of the U-M golf course. I probably used the points from my credit card to pay for at least part of the bill.

I think that we must have left on Thursday morning. We took the Canadian route through Ontario, and I remember that I was very upset that there was a long delay when we entered near Buffalo. When we got to the front, the border guy asked me what my license plate was. I knew that it was three digits followed by FAU, but I was not sure of the number. I guessed, and he said that that was close enough.

The 10+ hour drive time that Google Maps sited, and I am pretty sure that we did not leave at the crack of dawn, and we stopped for food twice. We might have stopped in Plymouth to check out the house on Sheldon Rd., too. Also, I have a vague recollection that we crossed over north of Lake St. Clair to avoid rush hour traffic in Detroit. The Ambassador Bridge was closed for construction. The lines at the tunnel must have been outrageous.

In any case, I think that we arrived at the Hampton Inn after dark on Thursday, September 5. We probably ate the free breakfast at the hotel the next morning.

I remember that we spent most of a day walking around the U-M campus and assessing how much had changed in the twenty-eight years since we had last been there. That must have been on Friday. I remember that Allen Rumsey House did not appear to have changed much at all. I am pretty sure that I ducked into the Intramural Building to assure myself that the overall championship won by A-R in 1969-70 was still recognized on the banner.

I also remember showing to Sue the spot behind the administration building where the water balloons launched from the fourth floor of A-R landed. I am pretty sure that we ate lunch at a restaurant on S. University near the engineering buildings.

We also had an appointment with Linda (Calo) Martini, who was working, I think, at the Michigan Debate Institute or maybe the Michigan Intercollegiate Speech League. We were hoping to see Kent (introduced here) as well, but he was not present. Linda said that he had taken it very hard when his mother died. It all seemed a little mysterious.

We were supposed to meet Josh and some other debate alums at a bar in Ann Arbor on Friday evening. Several of those in attendance wore Michigan Debate tee shirts that closely resembled the one that I once had. However, none of theirs had the letter C (for captain) on the front and “Prof. Wavada” on the back. My tee shirt had not survived the decades since the debaters gave it to me in 1970.

I am pretty sure that Bill Colburn, who had been Director of Forensics back in the sixties and seventies was there, too. I could hardly recognize him.

I learned that the debate team had been divorced from the speech department, which had at some point been combined with the journalism department. Somehow the debate team had taken control over the summer institute and turned a locally successful gathering run mostly by Wayne State people into the #1 such event in the entire nation. The benefits to the U-M debate program were enormous. It generated a lot of cash for the team. It provided summer employment and recognition for the coaching staff. Most importantly, top-flight high school debaters flocked to the institute every summer, and some inevitably fell in love with Ann Arbor and the U-M campus, enrolled, and joined the team.

The program also received funding from the University and had begun to receive significant contributions from its growing alumni base, most of whom were lawyers. I was astounded to learn that one of the recently graduated debaters, Dylan Keenan, had attended one of the Shawnee Mission schools and had majored in math⁴.

On Saturday we ate breakfast at the Hampton Inn and then drove to the game. Parking was always scarce, but we found a spot that was not too far from the stadium. We somehow eventually found the area where the debaters tail-gated. I think that we met up with Wayne Miller there. He was with some of his friends from the seventies.

Another short walk brought us to the stadium. Almost everyone wore blue and/or maize, but someone in the large group of fans crossing the street was wearing a red hat with a white M on it. The guy directing traffic called to him and said, “Well, you got the letter right, but whoever sold you that hat must have been color-blind.” Sue told me that someone also gave her a hard time because she was carrying a red handbag.

We sat in the upper reaches to the left of the scoreboard. The student section begins in the middle of the block M and stretches to the far end zone.

There are no bad seats in Michigan Stadium, but almost everyone had a better view of the action than we did. We were near the top in one of the corners of the end zone. It was more comfortable than being crammed together in the student section. It was also much more pleasant than UConn games because no liquor was allowed in the stadium.

I think that this was the big play near the end of the game.

The game, however, was painful to watch. U-M started well. The score was 10-0 at the end of the first quarter, and people in the stands were happy for a time with the team’s new approach to offense. However, after that the winningest team in college football stalled. By the fourth quarter it was 10-6. Brandon Minor scored a late touchdown to make the score a little more acceptable. Michigan had never lost to any team from the Mid-American Conference. For a while it appeared that we might be watching something historic.

Afterwards we drove with Wayne to Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burgers. Wayne was surprised that I knew about it. I informed him that I had gone there more than once a month for the four years that I lived at A-R.

Inside a blowhard who was a little ahead of us in line started telling stories about how he had worked with the legendary Krazy Ray. Everyone was impressed when I said that I came here all the time when Krazy Ray ran the grill, and I sure didn’t remember this guy. I then explained how upset Ray would get if someone tried to order the whole meal from him. He strictly grilled and assembled the burgers. You were expected to give the rest of your order to the next person behind the counter.

The burgers were still very tasty, and the atmosphere was magical. I had a great time.

Ann Arbor to Hudsonville: One other very important event occurred in Ann Arbor, but the details are shrouded. Sue somehow arranged for a new custom-designed tee shirt for me that was nearly identical to the one that the guys had gotten me in 1976. I remember that she ordered me to stop at a location on the outskirts of town (I think) on the way to Hudsonville. She went inside for a while and returned with a bag that she presented to me. I can’t say that I was surprised—Sue is notoriously bad at keeping secrets—but it was a very nice gesture.⁵

I don’t remember anything about the drive to Hudsonville. We probably arrived there at about lunch time. I think that we only stayed one night and that Bob and Carol put us up for the night in a cottage that was on their property.

An overhead view of the Locke property. Those trees had leaves on them when we were there.

Their home was in a secluded area surrounded by woods and wildlife. I remember that there was a pond nearby and that Carol was interested in birds, especially cardinals.

We saw at least some of the daughters, their husbands, and their children. Sue reportedly brought a game with her that she had used in her work with the Enfield after-school program. It was involved with traveling from state to state. I vaguely remember it. She said that she left it with them.

Hudsonville to Enfield: Our route home was quite different fromour route to Hudsonville. We took I-96 and I-69 across Michigan and crossed to Canada at Sarnia. We then took 402 and 403 across Ontario. I remember nothing about this journey.

1. In 2010 Josh was convicted of soliciting a minor for sex and went to prison for a few years. The article in the Ann Arbor News about the incident is posted here. In 2023 his LinkedIn page (posted here) listed his jobs as Criminal Justice Policy Manager at Dream.Org and host of the Decarceration Nation podcast.

2. Aaron took over the program after Josh was fired. In 2023 he was still the coach of perhaps the most successful program in the country. However first place at the National Debate Tournament has still evaded the Wolverines.

3. Carol died in 2018. Her obituary has been posted here. Bob outlived all of his siblings. He died in 2022. His obituary is posted here.

4. That last part may not be right. Dylan, whose LinkedIn page is posted here, evidently majored in economics. Dylan and his partner, Adam Farra, had made it to the semifinals of the NDT in 2008.

5. I still have the tee shirt in 2023.

1998 TSI: The Third Crisis

Posted on May 24, 2021 by Mike

Keeping Denise in the fold. Continue reading →

My recollection of many of the events portrayed below was fuzzy. I was not even certain of the year (1998) or the time of year (autumn) until I found a dated document. Lacking a good way of pinning down the details, I needed to guess at or be vague about some things.

Background: For me the period from 1995 through 1999 was the busiest, most exciting, and most stressful of any that I spent working for TSI. It was also the most potentially terrifying period. Our marketing director, Doug Pease_¹, had hit the mother lode and put us in a position to dominate the market on which I had decided to focus our attention back in the late eighties.

Most large retailers, especially department stores, were organized into divisions, and each division was responsible for its own advertising. So, when a large retail organization decided to name AdDept as the preferred system for advertising, we would usually install a system at each division. In 1998 the May Company,² which at the time had seven department store divisions, had already endorsed AdDept. Doug had also negotiated installations for the three divisions of the Tandy Corporation³ and he convinced the people at Proffitt’s⁴ Marketing Group (PMG) to purchase systems for six of their divisions. In addition to these, Doug had also made headway at several other potential clients such as Elde- Beerman, Gottschalks, and Macy’s West.

In short, TSI’s business was finally booming. The challenge was no longer whether the company could generate enough income to meet the next payroll. The question—and it was a very serious one—was whether we could meet our commitments to all of these new installations, almost all of which required significant custom programming.

There were a few other issues as well. The twenty-first century was approaching. AdDept had been made Y2K-compliant from the outset. We also had produced a version of the GrandAd system for the AS/400 that would work in the twenty-first century. We needed to convert all of the software that we used in TSI’s office as well. These undertakings were labor-intensive and required extensive testing. The details of those efforts are described here.

The company therefore faced tremendous challenges in providing the software and support for commitments that I had already made and for the prospective contracts that were almost certainly imminent. Furthermore, the person who had at that point done most of the AdDept programming, myself, would undoubtedly be devoting much less time to coding in the next few years.

I would be doing all the installations and on-site training. I also accompanied Doug on many sales trips. I gathered all of the requirements for new code and wrote the design documents and programming requests. I wrote all the marketing materials and anything else that needed to be written, as well. I also ran the business and extinguished the most serious fires. Last but not least, I did the great majority of the research on new hardware offerings and new software techniques. I still did quite a bit of coding, but I now relied on the programmers for most of it.

Fortunately, I had a team of all-stars to help. Sandy Sant’Angelo handled the support line, which during the late nineties was nearly always busy. She was quite good at documenting problems and making the customers feel comfortable. The programmers were Steve Shaw, Harry Burt, and Denise Bessette. Steve and Harry were both good programmers, and they were both familiar and comfortable with TSI’s programming standards. However, they had little knowledge of details of the AdDept system or the way that retail advertisers worked and thought. Early in 1998 Steve Shaw surprised me by leaving TSI to take a programming job at the Phoenix Life in Hartford.

Denise was extremely dependable. She was also very meticulous in her work habits and thoroughly familiar with both TSI’s standards and most of the basics of advertising. She told me that she did not want to travel, however. Therefore, I could not use her for any of the trips that I made to clients.

The Known Problem: I always tried to keep the employees—especially the programmers—happy. The work at TSI environment was, I think, generally positive. The company had very few rules. There was no dress code at all, although I expected the employees to spruce up a little when customers came to our office for training. I wrote up a short document that listed what we expected of employees. My door was literally always open.

TSI paid the programmers pretty well, and by the mid-1990’s we had implemented good programs of health and disability insurance and a 401K with matching contributions. Although I felt a great deal of stress during this period, I tried to avoid putting pressure on the coders.

I understood that there was one problem that was inherent to TSI and other small businesses: there was little or no room for advancement. I could reward people for good work, and I could try to make their work challenging and enjoyable. However, it they were ambitious and wanted to climb the corporate ladder, there was not much that I could do. I suspect that this is why Steve quit. Similarly, if they were interested in a position with more responsibility, my options were likewise limited.

I tolerated—and even encouraged—a certain amount of creativity, but after Sue left the office (described here) in 1994. I made all the important decisions. It wasn’t that I liked exercising power. I just reckoned that none of the programmers were interested in managing the business. I would have been happy just to code all day.

As good as the staff was, our upcoming workload was so massive that there was very little room for error. I knew, for example, that Sue and I could not consider another big trip until all the installations were stable, which might take years. I also understood that I had to keep the entire programming team intact if possible. As I have explained in other blog entries, I figured that every time that a programmer quit I lost at least six months of my own productivity between the time spent looking for a replacement, training him or her, and correcting all the mistakes. Furthermore, there was never a good time to look for coders, but 1997—just months before Y2K raised its ugly head—was one of the worst.

Harry and Steve were good programmers, but I knew very well that the key member of the team for the next few years was Denise. Losing her would be a catastrophe that I did not want to contemplate. I probably should have worried more than I did.

TSI’s Telephone System: Each desk at TSI had a unit like the one shown at the left. The company had many phone lines, but no one, not even Doug or I, had a direct line. TSI had two phone numbers that outsiders knew about. One line was dedicated to customers reporting problems or asking questions. That line was answered by Sandy.

The other number was in the phone book and on our letterhead and business cards. We disclosed it to prospects, vendors, and a few others. That line was answered by the administrative person.

There were also two rollover lines. If a caller called either the main number or the support number, and that line was busy, the phone would still ring, but someone at TSI would need to press the flashing button for a rollover line to answer it.

TSI relied on this phone system until the business shut down in 2014. Doug and a few others pressed me to get a more modern system in which each person had her/his own line. A couple of times I priced out these options, but I could see no advantage that was worth spending thousands of dollars. Besides, I liked our phones. In my assessment, they had one overarching advantage. They made it much more difficult for employees to initiate or receive calls from the outside. There was also a fairly strong incentive to keep non-business calls short.

Harry and Denise dressed up for a TSI Christmas party.

Denise Bessette: Denise was the first programmer that Sue and I hired in 1984. The details are posted here. She worked full-time for a couple of years and then part-time for quite a few years while she finished her undergraduate degree at Smith College and then earned a masters degree at Trinity College. In 1993 she became a full-time employee again. We let her use Sue’s office, which was better than her previous location, but it was still less than optimal because Sue never removed all of her junk after she stopped coming to the office in 1994. We also gave Denise a substantial raise. I tried to keep her in the loop on what direction the company was going, but I did not set up any kind of a formal process for doing so. I should have, but I didn’t. My excuse was that I was away on trips a lot, and when I was in the office I was exceptionally busy.

I should emphasize that, even though we had worked together for many years, Denise and I did not have much of a personal relationship. She invited Sue and me to her house in Stafford, CT, for supper once in the eighties. We never reciprocated, presumably because our house was always a mess. I doubt that in all of those years Denise and I had talked about anything besides work more than a handful of times.

During the time that Denise had worked at TSI she had occasionally received phone calls from her husband, her mother, or one of her sisters. She might have received one or two calls from other people. In the fall of 1998, however, even I, who would ordinarily pay little or no attention to such a thing, noticed that she was receiving numerous phone calls from a “friend” named Jackie.

Herberger’s: My most vivid memories of this period were when I was in St. Cloud, MN, the home base for Herberger’s a chain of eleven department stores, 1300 miles away from TSI’s office. At the time I was installing TSI’s AdDept system on a small AS/400 in the advertising department there. A more detailed description of the installation is posted here.

The offices were on an upper floor of this store.

I only visited Herberger’s a few times. The occasion that I remember the most clearly was certainly not my first trip there. It might have been the second or third. I remember that it was rather cold, but the weather did not approach the frigid levels for which nearby Frostbite Falls is famous.

In those days the only way to reach St. Cloud was through the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Northwest Airlines sponsored a shuttle service to the St. Cloud Regional Airport⁵. I can’t remember whether on this occasion I took that flight or rented a car and drove. I am pretty sure that I stayed at a hotel that was within easy walking distance of Herberger’s headquarters, which was on St. Cloud’s main drag, St. Gernaine St. I am pretty sure that I stayed two nights and then flew back to Connecticut on the third evening.

The main thing that I remember about my first day there was that I called the office several times to see if everything was all right. This was beyond unusual for me. On most trips, unless I needed help about some problem that I had encountered, I seldom called more than once. I have always hated talking on the phone, even if it was to people I liked. I liked all of TSI’s employees.

I don’t think that I spoke with Denise on any of those calls. However, I got the distinct impression that something was amiss. Although there was nothing particular that provoked alarm, the feeling of impending dread almost nearly overwhelmed me. I desperately wanted to get back to TSI’s office to discover the details so that I could deal with the situation. Of course, this was not possible. I had made a commitment to get the system up and running at Herberger’s, and I could not abandon the project because of a nebulous feeling.

After my first day at Herberger’s I ate supper by myself as usual. I don’t remember where I dined or what I did afterwards. I might have taken a walk. I might have read a book. I might have watched television. I do remember worrying.

I always got very tired after dinner. Every night I took a shower around 9:30 or 10:00 and then went to bed. I sat in bed for a few minutes reading a book. I almost never got through more than one chapter before the letters would begin to swim around on the page. I would then turn out the lights. Normally I was sound asleep within a few seconds.

St. Cloud in 1997 had newer cars, but otherwise it looked just like this.

Not this night. For a few hours I emulated Bobby Lewis—“Tossin’ and turnin'”⁶. I decided to make myself physically tired. There were not many choices available for nocturnal exercise. I dressed and put on my coat and hat. I then walked around St. Cloud for at least an hour. I did not go far. I just walked up and down the streets. None of the buildings seemed to have more than three stories. The only other thing that I remember noticing was a Maytag or Whirlpool store that sold appliances. I had thought that these stores—mainstays of my youth—had gone the way of the dodo, but they evidently still persisted in St. Cloud in 1998.

I eventually drifted back to the hotel and tried to sleep. I probably dozed off for a while before it was time to prepare for work. I remember that I ironed my shirt while I listened to Vivaldi on my CD player through my Bose headphones.

I was running on fumes that day. I chain-drank black coffee to try to remain alert. I took notes on all of the things that the Herberger’s employees said that they needed AdDept to do. I knew very well that Steve VeZain at PMG had already made it clear to me that no custom code would be provided for Herberger’s. Steve said that they needed to adapt to the system that worked for everyone else. I called in to TSI’s office several times on that second day, as well.

I flew back to Connecticut that night in an even worse mood than the foul outlook that these exhausting trips usually produced. On the one hand I was frustrated because the AdDept system did not work the way that the Herberger’s employees wanted it to, and there was nothing much that I could do to help them. They had no clout with PMG. They were, after all, by far the smallest division, and they were on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line. On the other hand I was also very apprehensive about what I would find out when I went into the office the next day.

The Denouement: On my first day back in the office Denise confided that she had been offered a job as IT director at a fairly small company that used an AS/400. I am not sure whether she would have any employees under her or not. Truth to tell, I did not care much what kind of job it was. My sole objective was to take whatever steps were necessary to persuade her to stay at TSI. I also learned that Jackie, as I expected, was a corporate headhunter for an employment agency.

I tried to talk Denise out of accepting the job. I emphasized how important I thought that she was to TSI. She asserted that she was mostly looking for something new. She had been doing mostly the same job for thirteen years.The best that I could get out of her was that she would think about it overnight.

Denise usually arrived at TSI’s office at about 9:00⁷. The morning following our conversation I went outside to meet her in the parking lot. I was extremely nervous when her car finally pulled into the lot. She got out and immediately informed me that she had decided to accept the other job.

I cannot say that I was surprised, but I was still crushed. I couldn’t face going back into the office. So I went and sat in my car and moped. I felt as bad or at least nearly as bad as when Bill Davey and I just missed qualifying for the National Debate Tournament in 1970 (described here) or when Sue abandoned me to go to Alaska in 1973 (described here). No situation in the intervening twenty-three years came close to evoking this feeling.

I had no idea how to deal with this situation. We had mountains of work. I was in no position to take on more of it myself, and I could only squeeze a little more out of Harry. I had made commitments to several clients. I could not select one or two to work on and dismiss the others. They all had deadlines, and they had given us deposits or were long-time clients that I was not prepared to disappoint.

Sitting in the car was not helping. I drove to the Enfield Square Mall, parked my Saturn, went inside, and walked around. At that time there were some benches inside. I rested on one of them every so often. Eventually a plan coalesced in my mind. It seemed like a good idea; I just wish that I had thought of it earlier so that it would not appear that I was being extorted.

That evening I discussed my idea with Sue. I honestly thought that it would be as difficult to persuade her to agree as it would be to convince Denise. I was wrong. She understood the important role that Denise played, and she agreed in principle with everything that I proposed. She also knew that I was miserable.

I located the original written proposal that I presented to Denise. It was somewhat different from what I remembered. Here is what it said:

Denise as Principal:

Denise will have 25% share⁸ in TSI. The three principals will have monthly meetings to go over the results of the previous month vis-à-vis the business plan and discuss other issues. The 25% share will entitled her to a presumptive bonus of 25% of the profits after employee bonuses and SARSEP contributions. Denise will give up her commissions.
Denise will be given a budget of $125,000 for fiscal 1999. She will have six objectives:
1. Do what it takes to bring our staff up to strength.
2. Work with Doug to come up with a profitable and sustainable business plan for current products: fee schedules for programming and support, etc. The deadline for this is April 1, 1999.
3. Come up with a concrete plan for TSI’s next software (or whatever) product. The plan should include recommendations about whether it should be done inside of TSI-AdDept or in another milieu. The deadline for this is September 1, 1999. TSI will pay for necessary travel. Mike has several frequent flier round-trips to use.
4. Come up with suggestions to ease tension and make work fun for everyone. This involves removing the “Wag the Dog” orientation we now have.
5. Implement remote dial-in support and a LAN (TSI will pay for the hardware).
6. Get someone AS/400 certified or figure a way around it.
Suggestion: Use part of the budget to hire Steve back in a new position. I would like to get five man-days of programming/support from the two of you, but this won’t work if there is not a firm system in place to guarantee freedom from support calls. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to work from some other location (which requires remote dial-in support).

I met privately with Denise on the following day. She was stunned by the offer and very impressed. However, she had already made a commitment to the other company. Moreover, there was another employee at the other company whose fate was somehow linked to Denise getting hired. I don’t remember the details. In any event Denise accepted my offer, I got our lawyers to make it legal, and she called the other company and Jackie. Neither was pleased.

This the first page of TSI’s revised stockholders agreement.

When I spoke with Denise, I made it clear that the monthly meetings would actually include Sue only if Sue insisted on attending, which I doubted would happen often. When we actually distributed annual bonuses, we gave Sue a minimal one and split the profits 50-50. The “concrete plan” became A^xN. I do not recognize the “Wag the Dog” reference, but within a year the company moved into a new office in East Windsor with a remarkably different atmosphere (as described here). The “someone” who became AS/400-certified⁹ was myself (as described here). Denise did not hire Steve Shaw back. Instead she hired Brian Rollet, who was something of a disappointment to her.

Denise and I worked together amicably and productively for another sixteen years. If she had not agreed to my plan, those years would have been been much less pleasant for me. I don’t know if I could have achieved half of what we accomplished together.

1. Much more about Doug Pease can be read here and in many of the blog entries about clients that he persuaded to purchase AdDept in the nineties.

2. TSI’s involvement with the May Company at the corporate level is posted here.

3. TSI’s dealings with Tandy Corporation are detailed here.

4. In the nineties Proffitt’s Inc. purchased all of those chains and turned them into divisions. After it purchased Saks Fifth Avenue, which already used AdDept, it changed its name to Saks Inc. TSI’s relationship with this company is described here. Separate blogs describe the individual divisions.

5. In 2021 this shuttle is no longer in operation. The only commercial flights from STC are on Allegiant Airlines. There are only two potential destinations—Fort Meyers/Punta Gorda and Phoenix/Mesa. Residents who want to fly anywhere else must somehow get to Minneapolis. Northwest Airlines filed for bankruptcy in 2005 and was acquired by Delta in 2008.

6. You can listen to the number 1 single on the Billboard chart for all of 1961 here.

7. Denise asked for this allowance when her son was young. It gave her time to get him off to school or wherever else he was headed. She also had a fairly long drive to Enfield and even longer to East Windsor. She often stayed late.

8. When TSI incorporated in 1994, Sue was given 45 percent of the stock, and I got 55 percent. The revised agreement left me with 40, Sue with 35, and Denise with 25.

9. IBM had implemented a new requirement for business partners. Not only did the software need to be certified, but also someone at each company must be certified by passing a test that was sales-oriented and a test that was more technical. I took both of these tests, as is described here.

1978-1979: Wayne State Debate Tournaments, etc.

Posted on March 27, 2021 by Mike

Debate at Wayne. Continue reading →

The debate topic for 1978-1979 was: “Resolved: That the federal government should implement a program which guarantees employment opportunities for all United States citizens in the labor force.”

My recollection of this entire year is spotty. I don’t even remember any specific cases that debaters were running. That word “guarantee” was pretty constraining. Anyone who did not like economics was in for a long year. The national unemployment rate at the time was about 6 percent, but it was slowly decreasing.

As in the previous year all of the coaching staff (except George) spent the first few months working with the novices. I don’t remember any details at all.

The varsity team largely remained the same. Debbie McCully did not exactly graduate (as explained here), but she was no longer associated with the team. Kevin Buchanan was still in school, but he decided not to participate in debate. Chris Varjabedian rejoined the team. George paired him with Scott Harris, and they were clearly the top team all year long. However, Mike Craig and Kent Martini also had a very good year.

All of the debate coaches returned from 1977-1978. Sheri Brimm was added.

The top novice team was Dave Debold and Kim Garvin. They were also quite an “item” for most of the year.

The team did not go to Camp Tamarack in 1978. I am not sure why not. I don’t remember anyone discussing it. I offered to organize a research trip to U-M for the varsity debaters. George deemed it a great idea. I drove a group of the debaters to Ann Arbor. It was probably on a Sunday; Saturday in the fall is devoted to football at U-M. I showed everyone where the libraries were. We then split up, researched for a few hours, and then gathered for lunch. Afterwards, people changed locations and continued researching. Everyone had a pretty good time, and a lot was accomplished. The debaters were a little overwhelmed by the amount and quality of materials available at U-M. I knew very well that there was a lot more within a mile or two, but I did not rub it in.

The social side of Tamarack was replaced by a Halloween party. It is described here.

Varsity: I must have gone to other tournaments during the course of the year, but the only one that I specifically remember is when I accompanied the two top teams on the “Florida Swing”. Scott, Chris, Mike, Kent, and I piled in a van supplied by the university’s motor pool and set off on I-75 for Tallahassee, the home of Florida State University. My recollection is that George made arrangements for us to stay overnight in his favorite “ma and pa” motel in Tennessee.

Everybody on the trip was quite serious about the upcoming debates. Quite a bit of productive work got done. Even so, it was an awfully long time to sit in the car.

Despite the backbreaking drive the debaters did well at FSU. I think that Scott and Chris made it to the final round. Mike and Kent also qualified for the elimination rounds. I have a vague recollection that they may have even been scheduled to face each other in an elimination round, and I had to decide who should advance.

The second tournament was at Central Florida University in Orlando. We had a free day in between tournaments. Unfortunately, there was not nearly enough time available to stand in line at Disney World or any of the other major tourist attractions in the Orlando area.

Fortune shone on us when we were just about halfway to our destination. I spotted a billboard for an interesting place called Reptile Land on state highway 301 near the town of Lawtey, FL, southeast of Jacksonville. We decided to give it a try.

By the time of our visit it was a little bigger than it appears in the photo. It also actually had more than just snakes and alligators. As I recall, their was at least one chimpanzee and diverse other birds and mammals. And there were no lines!

Reptile Land was obviously a tourist trap, but we all had a good time thee. I regret to tell readers that readers that Reptile Land closed forever not long after our visit.

UCF was not yet known for football, but it had a very good debate team in 1978-1979.

After that nice little break we were all business for the rest of our time in the Sunshine State. In the Central Florida tournament both teams again qualified for the elimination rounds. This time they landed on different sides of the bracket. Both teams won their octafinal rounds. Both teams won their quarterfinal rounds. Both teams also won in the semis.

So, for the first time in the long history of the Wayne State program, two of its teams closed out the finals of a varsity tournament. We brought home both the first and second place trophies. It was quite an accomplishment, and we were all super-pumped. We could not wait to call George and tell him the news. The trip back to Detroit was much longer than the drive down to Florida in terms of miles, but the time flew by.

It seems strange to report that that jubilant return trip is my last clear memory of the 1978-1979 debate season. I remember that Scott and Chris cruised through districts, but I don’t even recall whether I attended with them. Kent and Mike were awarded a second-round bid. So, for the first time ever Wayne State had two teams at the 1979 NDT at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. George did not bring a second coach, even though the team drove. I don’t remember why not.

At the NDT Scott and Chris qualified with a 6-2 record. This was the first time that Wayne State had qualified for the elimination rounds at NDT since 1967. Kent and Mike won five and lost three. They were the only 5-3 team that missed the elimination rounds. They persevered through a very tough schedule; and when their fate was announced, the crowd applauded their performance. I am sure, however, that it was a tough moment, especially for Kent, who was a senior.

Scott and Chris lost in the octafinals to Harvard on a 3-2 decision. Thus ended one of the greatest varsity debate seasons in Wayne State’s history. Wayne’s teams reached the quarterfinals of various tournaments twenty-seven times, the same number as in the previous year, but the close-out and the NDT performance made this year even better.

Televised Debates. For a few months Wayne State participated in a weekly television program on Channel 20 called City Update. It might have been the lowest-rated program on Detroit’s lowest-rated station. I was already quite familiar with the program because the main presenter was a very good-looking young lady whose name I don’t remember. They gave the team a fifteen-minute segment to present a one-on-one debate on a topic of our choosing. Many debaters and some of the IE performers got to appear before the camera.

Fire did not kill Garth Gimble. He was impaled on a Christmas tree.

The best debate was the one in December in which the topic was something like “Is there a Santa Claus?” Mike Craig stole the show as the negative. One of his arguments was entitled “Christmas tree deaths”. He based it on a segment of the Fernwood 2Night show. However, Mike lost; Jack Kay showed up in a Santa suit to deliver the verdict.

I moderated several of these debates. All that I did was to introduce the debaters and the topic. I was surprised that the whole operation was not more professional. The set consisted of a rostrum in an empty room. Only four of us were present—the two debaters, the moderator, and the camera person. On most occasions the camera person was the attractive lady who also hosted the show. Our segment of the show was taped, but we only got one attempt. If someone flubbed something, it was aired anyway.

On one occasion, however, the rules were slightly changed. Three of us that day taped a promo for City Update—the lovely hostess, a debater (I don’t remember which one; it might have been Ruth Kay), and me standing beside one another behind the rostrum. Someone else might have operated the camera, but I think that the presenter set the focus and then just let it run.

We did six takes. I said my lines correctly the first five times, but either the hostess or the debater was not happy with it. On the sixth attempt they both were fine, but I hesitated a little at one point That was the one we used because I said that I didn’t care.

High School Tournament: Every year that I coached at Wayne State the FU hosted a tournament for high school debaters. We all pitched in. In 1979 I was in charge of the tabulation room. Kent Martini and one or two other people helped out. Kent was done with his portion of the final results before the others had finished theirs. When he announced this fact, I told him to check everything again.

Well, he didn’t do it, and George ended up announcing incorrect results. When the mistake was realized, Kent went to George and apologized. He even told George that I had told him to check everything again.

Kent felt terrible, and, as I described here, I knew exactly how he felt. At least he admitted his mistake.

High School Institute. In each summer Wayne State hosted a week-long institute for high school debaters. U-M also hosted an institute, but theirs was more of a camp. Students stayed in the dorms, and it was famous throughout the state. The U-M institute was run by a Wayne State alumna, Jayne Greco¹, who was also the debate coach at Kimball High School in Royal Oak, the institution that Kent Martini, Mike Craig, and Dave Debold attended.

In the 1979 edition of Wayne State’s institute I gave a lecture on topicality arguments. I insisted that they were an important part of argumentation in competitive debates. At some point I inserted the phrase “despite what Mrs. Greco might say at the U. of M. Institute”. This got back to her, and she complained to George.

George told me that I should call her and apologize to her. My sweaty hands nearly dialed her number several times, but I never did. I did not know what to say to her. I wasn’t sorry. I chose my words carefully, and I did not say anything untrue or insulting. She was notorious for thinking that only a few cases should be allowed so that no negative team would need to argue about topicality. I strongly disagreed.

Besides, I really did not care what she thought of me.

1. Jayne Greco died in 2000. Her rather sparse obituary can be found here.

1977-1980 Part 3B: Debate at Wayne State: The Coaches

Posted on March 15, 2021 by Mike

My recollections of the other coaches. Continue reading →

Any treatment of any aspect of debate at Wayne State University in the second half of the twentieth century must begin with George Ziegelmueller¹. During the course of my seven years of debate I had formed two opinions of him: 1) He was a mediocre debate coach; 2) He was a horrible judge. I certainly underrated him as a coach (at least on the affirmative), but not as a judge. Of course, I was (and still am) prejudiced. After my last tournament (districts in 1970, which is described here) I hated him as much as I have ever hated anyone in my life.

Nevertheless, I can usually compartmentalize. George and I had a good working relationship from the start. I did whatever he told me to do. I had great respect for his ability to deal with the bureaucracy, and I have no doubt whatever that the welfare and success of his debaters meant the world to him.

My favorite George story took place in the Detroit Metro Airport in 1980. Six of us were preparing to attend the National Debate Tournament at the University of Arizona. George and I were the coaches. The debaters were senior Scott Harris, juniors Kevin Buchanan and Mike Craig, and Dave Debold, who was only a sophomore.

We were all very excited. For three of the four guys it was the very first time that they had flown to a tournament. For me it was also very special. I had never been to the state of Arizona. Also, I knew that this might well be my last debate tournament ever.

George handed out the tickets to each of us. He informed us of the gate from which the plane would depart. Before we went through security, however, Dave noticed something amiss. “These tickets are for Phoenix,” he said. “Isn’t the University of Arizona in Tucson?”

Our tickets were indeed non-stop tickets to Phoenix on Frontier Airlines. Incredibly, George was able to exchange the tickets for ones to and from Tucson. We only had to wait in the terminal for an hour or so, and all of our luggage was also transferred to our new flight.

George did not really believe in tipping. Having been to Europe several times, I agree with him in principle. However, this is not Europe; most American restaurants paid (and still pay) their employees scandalously low wages.

The way George expressed his philosophy about tipping was this: “I pay for the meal out of the back-pocket of my pants; the tip comes from the front pocket.” That is, he paid for the bill with folding money and the tip with change.

I only accompanied George on a few trips. When I did, I would covertly pass the hat among the debaters. I would add my donation and give the total collection to one of the debaters. On our way to the car he/she would remember something left behind in the restaurant, return to the table, and supplement the tip with what we had collected.

The tournament in Denver was held at Metropolitan State College, now known as Metropolitan State University. It was an excellent venue.

I worked very hard during my first year at Wayne. I went to whatever tournaments George selected for me, and I did not step on anyone’s toes. Even before districts I asked George if I could go to the National Debate Tournament in Denver in the spring. George was taken aback by this request.

Jack Kay, after all, was his right-hand man. George said that I could accompany the team to districts, but he and Jack would judge. I replied that the team (Debbie McCully and Scott Harris) did not need me at districts. However, they had very little experience on the national circuit, and I had a lot. I knew many of the debaters on the national scene and almost all of the coaches. I even volunteered to pay my own way to Denver if and when our team qualified. George eventually agreed, and he found the money.

This helped diminish, but not erase, the memory of the round against Ohio U. at districts in 1970.

Pam and Billy Benoit² (beh NOYT) were my office-mates in Manoogian Hall. They had both attended Ball State University in Muncie, IN, and Central Michigan in Mount Pleasant. In 1979 Billy presented a paper on philosophy at a conference in Amsterdam. Pam went with him. I don’t remember how they got away with this. They both taught several classes.

Sue Comparetto somehow persuaded them to allow her to join them on this trip. She enjoyed the city immensely, and has wanted to return³ for the last forty-two years.

The Benoits once invited Sue and me over for supper in their apartment, which was near the campus. The repast itself was a little skimpy by my standards until they pulled out their fondue pot and the dipping snacks.

Billy and Pam were among the first players of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) after I had purchased the original boxed set on August 17, 1978, as a present for myself on my thirtieth birthday. In the first few adventures we took turns as Dungeon Master. These were “Monte Haul” dungeons. The player characters soon reached level 5 or 6.Outlandishly rich orcs were slain by the thousand.

When the Player’s Handbook appeared a year or so later, I constructed a dungeon with a style that was more verismo. Deep in that dungeon was the lair of the fiercest monster they had yet to encounter, Frix the White Dragon. Non-player characters had warned everyone that he was very powerful because of his super-cold breath. One day Pam, Billy, and Vince Follert decided to go after him.

After a few minor skirmishes they found Frix’s cave, but, alas, Frix struck first and turned the entire party all to icicles. All three players were very angry at me for not providing them with a way to resurrect their highly prized characters.

The denouement of this story is in Vince’s section of this blog.

In 2021 I unearthed my slightly warped copy the graduate student’s bible.

By the time that Billy and Pam were ready to submit their dissertations in the spring of 1980 Sue and I had an IBM 5120 computer in our house. Sue used it for her fledgling programming business. I also tinkered with it. I had written a word processing program that printed documents in the format approved by the American Psychological Association. The only printer that it could use was a dot-matrix, but that was not yet considered gauche. I called my program “Amanuensis”.

The 5120 supported this printer and no other.

The university allowed graduate students a fixed number of minutes of computer time per semester. Pam and Billy traded me their minutes for one or two semesters in exchange for my printing of their dissertations using Amanuensis. Needless to say, I had to enter the text and footnotes through the keyboard. Producing a long paper with footnotes perfectly on a manual typewriter was a daunting task.

I ran into a few problems because, of course, no one checked my work. They became very jittery as the deadline day approached, but I was able to hand the final copies over to them with a few hours to spare.

In the winter of 1978-1979 Pam and Billy invited Sue, me, Vince, and, I think, John Pfeiffer to a weekend at a family cabin near Pokagon (poh-KAY-gun) State Park⁴. My recollection is that we drove there on Friday evening and returned on Sunday afternoon. Two thing stand out in my mind from this event. The first was mundane. Evidently there was a shortage of water in the plumbing system. The bathroom bore a sign that read: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” Five of us shared that toilet.

The other memory of that trip is epic. The toboggan run in the park is long and fast. The channels for the toboggans were not particularly narrow, but Billy was a big guy, and, to put it in nautical terms, he was broad in the beam. I think that we only participated in one run. We split into two groups of three. I went with Vince and John. Sue was in the Benoit’s group. The safety precautions for the ride were minimal. A guy at the top yelled “Keep your legs in!” before he gave the toboggan a shove.

Our toboggan ride was somewhat thrilling because the pace was fast, and the riders had absolutely no control. I was in front. I just made myself as small as I could. The guy behind me had his legs on both sides of me. The guy behind him likewise put a leglock on the middle man. By the time that we reached the bottom, which was a quarter mile from the launching tower, one of Vince’s legs had rubbed against the side of the track a few times. He was sore but not injured. John and I were unscathed.

The three in the other toboggan did not fare as well. All three suffered scrapes. Billy was by far the worst. He stuck out on both sides of the toboggan and suffered rather ugly burns. We did not take him to the hospital, but he could hardly walk for a day or two, and he was sore for weeks.

Sheri Brimm joined the program in the fall semester of 1978. She had just graduated from Wright State University in Dayton, OH. She knew very little about debate. If Wright State had a debate team, I never heard of it, and they were in our district.

Sheri lived in an apartment near campus with her husband David. I seem to remember that he was going to Law School at Wayne State.

I was in one class with Sheri. I think that it was with the rhetoric professor, Dr. Jim Measell. For one of our assigned papers he provided very explicit instructions for what he wanted. I knew this guy and warned Sheri that she should do it exactly the way that he prescribed. She said that she thought that what he really was looking for was creativity. She may have been kidding, but she got a bad grade on the paper.

I also took one trip with Sheri. We were in charge of a van full of debaters headed for a nearby tournament. Akron University comes to mind, but I may be wrong. I let her drive because I wanted to work with some of the debaters. While we were still in Detroit it began to snow or sleet, and there was a little ice on the road. Basically, it was a normal winter day in Michigan in the seventies. The van started to skid. I yelled to her from the back of the van, “Slow down.”

“The car is hydroplaning,” she explained, but she did not drive noticeably slower.

“Hydroplaning is on water. This is ice. SLOW DOWN!” I countered.

I did not have many dealings with Sheri even though she returned for 1979-80. George may have let her work with some of the novice debaters, and she kept a chair warm during practice rounds.

Gerry Cox⁵ was my age. George was eighteen years older than I was. Everyone else in the FU was younger than I. Gerry joined the staff in 1979 after finally earning his bachelor’s degree the previous spring. I coached Gerry in my first two years. We became good friends, even though we had almost nothing in common. I also kept in touch with Gerry after I left Wayne St. He came to visit Sue and me twice while we lived in Rockville, CT. More memories of him can be read here.

I have three vivid recollections of Gerry from that last year. For years Gerry had been associated with the department off and on. I remember well the way that he treated the departmental secretary, whose name was, I think, Janet. On one occasion Gerry approached her desk and greeted her with the following: “Why don’t we rent a room at a hotel, rub Crisco all over both of our bodies, and see what happens?”

This approach was quite a bit different from my short conversations with her.

The second strong memory is of the only time that I ever saw Gerry nervous. He was for some reason chosen to give a speech on traffic safety to members of the Detroit Police Department. It may have been a contest. I drove him there for moral support.

Gerry had seen these up close a few times.

Gerry was reluctant even to enter the room. Apparently he feared that one of Detroit’s finest would recognize him from years gone for encounters in markedly less formal encounters, probably bars. At last we entered and took a seat. Gerry kept his eyes lowered while we were so seated.

Eventually Gerry gave his speech, which argued that requiring helmets for riders of motorcycles was a bad idea. It was a terrible speech. He claimed that requiring helmets would not reduce injuries much and that in some cases it would be counterproductive. I was shocked that a former Wayne State debater would make such a claim without a whiff of evidence.

Helmets are obviously counterproductive.

The close of his speech was greeted with tepid applause. As he approached me, he said softly, “Let’s get out of here.”

In the car I asked him why he made those claims without any evidence. He was stunned. He asked me, “Are you saying that I forgot to read the evidence?”

When I confirmed it he laughed and laughed and buried his head in his hands.

Steve D’Agostino coached some of the Individual Events (IE) people in 1977-78. I hardly knew him. I think that he had academic problems and left after one year.

Vince Follert⁶ was a pretty good debater at Loyola in Chicago, a Jesuit university. I judged him a few times before he graduated in 1977. His partner was weak, and the coaching at Loyola was not great. Even so, they did pretty well. I was favorably impressed.

Vince had a studio apartment near the campus. I am not sure that I ever entered it. He came to supper at our house on Chelsea a few times. We became pretty close friends. We usually ate lunch together at one of a few favorite restaurants on Woodward. Woodward Coney Island is still there in 2021! Their loose hamburger sandwiches were very tasty. I don’t remember the name of the other restaurant. Vince was enchanted by one of the waitresses who never wore a bra.

Vince stayed at Wayne for two years. I taught his classes whenever he was at a tournament, and he returned the favor when I was out of town. In the fall of 1978 he made the mistake of asking me to take his very first class. Here is how I began: “My name is Mike Wavada. Don’t write it down; I am not your teacher. Your real teacher is named Vince Follert. He is away at a debate tournament today. You won’t like him. He is fat, he smokes like a chimney, and he talks too fast.”

I did not mention it, but he also went through several six packs of Diet Pepsi every day.

Vince was as fond as I was of Dungeons and Dragons. He played every chance that he got. He was even more angry than the Benoits were at the instantaneous demise of his beloved characters when they stormed into Frix’s lair. I think that Vince’s main character was named Guelph the Elf.

Several months later he confronted me about the incident. “Resist Cold is a first level clerical spell, isn’t it? We were just idiots. We deserved to die.” He was right. They probably could have absconded with Frix’s fabulous treasure horde if they had bothered to prepare for cold weather with spells that any rookie cleric would know.

Vince and I attended a convention of the Central States Speech Association⁷ in the spring of 1979. We both presented papers there.

I don’t remember why we did not take Greenie. Instead, we rented a car from Budget. We got a good deal. There was a modest daily charge, but there was no mileage limit. My recollection is that we drove to St. Louis, went to the convention, and then drove back within twenty-four hours. That seems almost incredible. Maybe the trip took two days. In any case the man at Budget was astounded when he looked at the odometer.

I did not witness Vince’s presentation. His panel occurred at the same time as mine. Walter Ulrich, a very fine coach at the University of Houston, presented the first paper in our room. He argued that the value of the proposition should always be from the perspective of the collective interest of the people of the United States. There was time for questions after the evaluations. I asked Walter what he thought of propositions that were stated at a different level. For example, one of them that I debated in high school said that nuclear weapons should be controlled by an unspecified international organization. He opined that those resolutions were illegitimate.

The approach I called unfair is based on Archbishop Whately’s view of presumption.

My paper, which was the last one in our session, was on causality. I posited was not a useful construct in argumentation. Debates should focus on necessary conditions and sufficient conditions. I also argued that the negative teams had the responsibility to defend something in every debate. It was perfectly OK to defend what currently existed or what the government might do, but arguing that a case should be rejected because Congress could just pass a law to solve the problem or provide the benefit was an unfair reliance on the concept of presumption.

The two reviewers hated my paper. Dave Ling, the coach from Central Michigan (and a Wayne State alum), was at least nice about it. The other reviewer was from Washington University of St. Louis, a guy who was renowned as the worst judge on the circuit. He made fun of me. The time allotted was exhausted by the time that they finished. I did not get a chance to rebut what they said.

Most top coaches would have agreed with every word that I said, but they did not often attend conventions like this one.

One last memory of Vince popped into my head. One day in 1979 he came into Manoogian with a hickey on his neck. He made no attempt to hide it, but he would not talk about it.

Vince received his masters degree in the spring of 1979. He coached debate for Dale Hample at Western Illinois in 1979-1980.

Ken Haught might have been on the staff in my last year, 1979-1980. I remember him, but only vaguely

Jack Kay was George’s right-hand man when I arrived. He was still a graduate student, but he had an office of his own. I came to learn that Jack had been a member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in his younger years. Reportedly he had actually met Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.

Jack married Ruth Colwander, who was just a sophomore in my first year at Wayne State. Jack had been the coach of Ruth and the other novices in the previous year. They had done very well.

I don’t know why, but I interacted very little with Jack. I remember only two fairly innocuous incidents. The first occurred at a staff meeting. George told us that some financial assistance had become available for one debater. I don’t remember the amount. George asked for suggestions as to who should get it. I immediately recommended that Ruth, who was the only serious debater who had a job, should be considered. Jack, who was involved with but not married to Ruth, was astonished at my suggestion. I guess that he thought of me as a foe. If so, it was not mutual.

The second event occurred at the National Debate Tournament in 1978 in Denver. Wayne State sent one team (Debbie McCully and Scott Harris) and three coaches to this tournament.

Wayne State’s team met (I think) one of the teams from Redlands in the eighth round. The whole tournament knew that both teams from Redlands were running a case that had something to do with infanticide. I had never heard it, and I no idea of the substance of Redlands’ plan.

Jack ran into the library. I don’t know if he found anything. I kept out of his way.

Jack had, however, heard the case in a previous round. When he saw that our team was facing Redlands, he rushed to the library to try to photocopy something. He then spent the little remaining time lecturing Debbie and Scott on how to attack the cse.

I wished that he had shared his ideas with us earlier—there were fairly long breaks for power-matching after every round. I said absolutely nothing at the time; he might have had an inspired argument.

Scott and Debbie lost 3-0. If Jack had not taken over, I would have advised them to relax and avoid the temptation to twist any of their prepared arguments to fit this case. Instead, they should just try to challenge everything, make reasonable claims of their own, and watch for mistakes. They should then concentrate on finding one decisive argument that they could win and sell it dramatically in the last rebuttal.

Of course, they still probably would have lost to a team with more high-level experience.

Jack was a big guy. He was also, unless I am mistaken, the only Jewish member of the staff. He was, I guess because of his size, recruited to play Santa Claus at the FU Christmas party. However, his “ho-ho-ho” was worse than pathetic. So, I made the big laugh from off-stage while he was entering.

Ron Lee joined the staff in 1979-80 wife his wife Karen. She was my age and debated at either Southern Illinois or Illinois State. She might have done something with the team at Wayne, too.

Ron debated at Wayne State, at times with Jack Kay. The only thing that I remember about his coaching technique was that he insisted that the team eat at restaurants that had waiters and/or waitresses. He hated going to counters for his food.

John Pfeiffer came from Florida He was at Wayne State for my first two years. In the second year he was the IE director.

John had an interesting background. He had worked at Disneyland as a strolling bear character. He said that it was the worst job in the world. He had also appeared as a character on roller skates in Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Donaldson’s Covenant books were my favorites.

Tuna Snider¹⁰ came to Wayne State in 1979-80, my last year, and was installed in Jack’s old office. I had known him a little when he was the coach at Boston College. I never heard anyone call him anything but Tuna.

I don’t think that I went to any tournaments with Tuna. In fact, the only interaction with him that I remembered was when he noticed that I was often sitting around the debate lounge reading a paperback book. One day he asked what kind of fiction I liked, and I answered, “Swords and sorcery”. He made a positive noise and returned to his office. In truth I read most of these fantasy books just to get ideas for D&D dungeons.

For some reason Tuna did not attend the NDT with us in Arizona in 1980, and my memories of his involvement with the program seemed to be minimal. Perhaps he had a falling out with George.

1. George died in 2019. A press release from the university can be read here.

2. In 2021 the Benoits are on the faculty of the communications department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Billy’s Wikipedia page is here. His boss’s career is described on this webpage. Click on her photo or the blue text.

3. Sue and I have a river cruise scheduled for October of 2021. It departs from Amsterdam, and we have also scheduled one extra day there.

4. The toboggan run at Pokagon State Park remained open through the pandemic winter of 2020-2021. Its website is here.

5. Gerry died in an automobile accident in, I think, the eighties. At the time he owned a company that produced machined parts for auto dealers. It was located in his family’s home town in Kentucky.

6. Vince died of colon cancer in the early eighties.

7. In the twenty-first century it is called the Central States Communications Association.

8. In 2021 Ken is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Dickinson State University in North Dakota.

9. Jack died in 2015. A tribute to him can be read here.

10. Tuna Snider got his PhD from Kansas, not Wayne State. He died in 2015 after spending more than thirty years at the University of Vermont. His Wikipedia page is here.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: National Debate Tournament

2020 Part 1: Pandemic Wars

2008 Road Trip to Michigan

1998 TSI: The Third Crisis

1978-1979: Wayne State Debate Tournaments, etc.

1977-1980 Part 3B: Debate at Wayne State: The Coaches